


here's looking at you

by smallestbrown



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Friends, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, It's Jason babey what'd you expect, Platonic Cuddling, Reader-Insert, basically orphan BFFs, four + 1 format
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:29:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23093353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallestbrown/pseuds/smallestbrown
Summary: Gotham is rarely beautiful. Dark and drenched, infested—sure.But here, with the sun floating downwards in the warm, Spring air, catching sunlight on his skin and lips as the breeze sweeps up his hair to curl around his ears, you hope that maybe Gotham could be kind to someone as beautiful as him. That maybe he could get it through his thick skull that you—some orphanage kid that had met him stealing tires and saving lives—you had found a whole world in his arms.// four times you accidentally find Jason; one time he finds you.
Relationships: Jason Todd/Reader
Comments: 14
Kudos: 151





	here's looking at you

**Author's Note:**

> Posted this on my fic thumblr [@countingsunlight](https://countingsunlight.tumblr.com/) over the course of /cough/ wayy too long. Here it is, my shameless reader-insert childhood orphan bffs jason todd fic, in all it's completed glory!

one.

You recognize the words—or rather, the profanities—only moments before you turn the corner. In the dark alley, you make out a figure bending down near the diver’s side wheel of a rusty beige Toyota. If it weren’t for all their swearing, the shadows, along with Gotham’s penchant for overlooking petty crime, might have hidden whatever they were doing. But as you slowly draw closer, there’s something in the person’s tone that strikes a secret, hidden chord in your chest. Somehow, you think, you know those swears. You know that voice.

“…Jason?” you ask cautiously. You see the boy’s shoulders tense, and immediately he’s on his feet, three new feet of distance between you, the wrench he’d been using brandished like a weapon.

His eyes flash, feral and defensive, though you see some of his aggression relax as he takes you in. You’re not what he was expecting. 

“Do we know each other?”

“Kinda,” you answer, shrugging a little. “We were at the Gotham Orphanage together for a while. Before you went rogue. You probably don’t remember,” you add, but realization is already slowly creeping onto his face.

“No, I remember you. Y/N. You kicked my ass once.”

“You had it coming,” you retort, though there’s no heat to it.

He snorts. “I usually do.”

During his brief stint at the Gotham City Orphanage, you’d known Jason only a little more than by his reputation. A hotheaded kid, about your age—ten, at the time, which by orphanage standards was creeping up on unplaceable. By then, kids were too disillusioned to be the bright-eyed, grateful adoptees parents wanted.

When Jason showed up, shoved into the system while his mother “sorted herself out”, you’d already known he wouldn’t stick around. Jason was a matchstick always looking for a flame, and he didn’t take well to the stiff curfews and rules they had there. Three years doing god-knows-what on his own obviously hadn’t knocked it out of him.

“You found a family?” Jason asks, eyeing your backpack. His tone is one you know well—jealous, proud, and fighting damn hard to hide it: the lonely child’s natural vibrato.

“Foster folks, for now,” you answer with a small nod. “ _Mr. and Mrs. Fuller_ , as if that isn’t the most disgustingly wholesome phrase you’ve ever heard.”

Jason snorts again, like a laugh that’s learned to hold itself back. You wonder what he’s been up to since he ran away, and find yourself unconsciously tallying up new facts about his appearance. You used to be taller than him, but despite the distance, you can tell he’s already got a few inches on you. His curly black hair ends in choppy locks around his ears—likely cut by himself, without a mirror—and the red hoodie that used to be so ridiculously big on him seems to be a better fit now, despite its many tears and stains.

The speed with which he’d jumped at the sound of your voice and the aggressive stance he’d instantly taken tug at you. You’d known he’d run away from the orphanage without much of a plan, but even then, you’d always secretly hoped he’d end up alright.

“What about you,” you ask, “you steal tires now?”

“Among other things,” Jason shrugs, a coy smile on his lips. He pauses, chewing on a thought. “Listen, Y/N, I don’t think I ever—"

The quick _whoop_ of a siren rings out behind you, and sharp shadows suddenly shift along the surface of the car Jason was jacking. The headlights cut bright angles on the boy’s face, his features stiff and his eyes wide. He grips the wrench tighter as the lights move past him and the car pulls to a stop.

You turn around, momentarily blinded by the flashlight of officer who steps out of the car.

“Everything alright here, miss?” she asks, lowering the light slightly away from your eyes.

“Yeah, y-yes,” you stutter out.

“You shouldn’t be hanging around alleys like this so late at night. It’s not safe, you know,”

“No, I was just—” you turn back to Jason, but the small space is empty. No trace of the boy you once knew. You remember waking up at the orphanage one day with a similar feeling when you’d noticed him missing from breakfast.

“—Just passing through,” you finish.

Perched on a darkened balcony, Jason watches. He listens; you don’t mention him as the police officer continues to question you, and you only risk a glance back to where he was once she has turned her back to you again.

When the two of you are long gone, he leaps over the railing and swings back down to the street. He picks up the wrench he’d quickly ditched behind the car, out of sight of the policewoman, and he gets back to work.

_At least they can keep a secret,_ he thinks.

two.

The fire had been burning long before you or any first respondents had reached the scene. But that never stopped Batman and Robin.

You watch from the edge of the crowd as the two figures swing in and out of windows, carrying tenants and pets and valued belongings. Robin hoists himself up onto a balcony, and you hold your breath as he balances on the railing before launching off to the next one. He and Batman are nearing the far side of the building now, a bit more out of sight of the crowd, but still within your field of vision.

You remember that the old Robin—Nightwing, now—was a demonstrable acrobat. This one seems agile enough, but definitely not on his predecessor’s level; rather than use his own momentum to swing himself onto the next platform, this Robin relies on his upper body strength to pull himself up.

It’s as he’s executing such a maneuver that it happens. Robin is dangling from a balcony four storeys up, when suddenly then there’s a sharp _bang!_ as an overheated pipe bursts above him. He glances up just in time to see the piece of heavy metal falling towards him. You see Robin drop one of his hands in an attempt to dodge it, but the pipe hits him square in the head.

He loses his grip and starts to fall.

You start to run.

You’re at the back of the crowd, so no one notices your sudden take-off, but even so, you aren’t quite sure where you’re going. _To save him_ , you think, though you shake your head at the stupid thought. _To help him_.

You slow your pace to hide behind the corner of a building as a low, stern voice rings out. A man’s voice. Which means—

“Are you alright?” asks Batman.

You peak around the corner briefly, enough to catch a glimpse of the two heroes. Batman releases a trigger and his grappling hook retracts, and Robin mumbles a reply as he leans against the brick wall, rubbing his head. A bright, red light flashes twice from Batman’s belt; he glances at it, taps a few buttons and looks back to his partner.

“Only two people left in the building. Top floor, north side.”

Robin bristles. “I can—”

“I know,” Batman interrupts, a steady hand on the boy’s shoulder. “But you took a hit back there, and if you get knocked out when you’re inside…” He takes a quick breath and releases Robin with a small step back towards the building. “Stay put, Jason. I’ll signal you when we’re clear.”

In a moment, Batman is gone, swept off into the shadows to finish the job. Your brain hardly registers it.

_Jason_. It couldn’t be.

But then, adjusting to the darkness, your eyes start to piece him together again. His unruly black hair—decently cut this time, ending a bit above his ears—the cut of his shoulders, their dejected slouch as Batman leaves him alone… It all feels familiar, in a way that a random three-year-old alleyway encounter really shouldn’t feel. Somehow, you’re so _sure_.

Without thinking, you take a step towards him. “We have to stop meeting like this,” you say.

You see the instinctive jump, a reflex born from street rat defensiveness. His stance isn’t as scrappy as it was when you’d found him stealing tires; there’s training to it now, poise, a mechanical thought process that you’re sure came from Batman himself. But underneath his mask, there’s the same flash of recognition, then relaxation, that’s somehow been burned into your memory.

“Y/N.” Jason works his jaw.

“Bird boy.”

He takes you in, still breathing a bit hard from the adrenaline of his fall. Through the holes in his mask, you notice his eyes scanning you intently—piecing something together. Suddenly he laughs, once, hands raising briefly before dropping back down. “Fucking Bird boy, yeah,” he says, shaking his head and smiling.

“You got hurt?” you ask.

“Nothing serious,” he says, a hand moving self-consciously to his injury. “Bru—Batman gets kinda overbearing. I could go back in. I should.”

“Well, some of us mortals would rather you live to fight another day.”

Jason smiles again, looking at his feet. He takes a deep breath and sits down, his back against the wall, resting his elbows on his knees. He lets his head lean on the cool brick, closing his eyes. You step towards him, waiting for a reaction, and when none comes you move to sit cross-legged next to him.

You still can’t quite believe it’s him.

“Heard you got adopted,” you add in the lull, as Jason makes no move to speak.

He tilts his head and gingerly scratches his neck, awkward. “Y… yeah. Still hard to believe it some days, to be honest.” He casts a quick glance at the apartment he and Batman came from—sirens are sounding off nearby, the rush of water and the sound of the crowd muffled by the night. 

_Of course_ , you think. _Well-meaning parent_ was written all over Batman’s caution.

“Bruce Wayne,” you continue. “To think he’d have a penchant for caped-crusading.”

Jason whips his head to look at you, yelling in pain as the swift movement cranes his neck. Your heart aches at the sound, and you want to reach out to him on instinct. _Woah there,_ you think. _The Boy Wonder really doesn’t need you comforting him._

Instead, you speak up again. “I won’t tell,” you say, simply.

Jason’s head is down, and his hands clutch his skull as he recovers from his own move. When he speaks, though, his voice is clear and surprisingly sincere. “I know.”

His tone takes you by surprise. “Oh, _you_ _know_? Because you and I are so close?” Your smile is teasing, and slowly, Jason looks up with his own, lopsided and relaxed grin. You’re starting to like seeing it a lot, though you brush that thought aside quickly.

“Call it a feeling,” he replies. As he straightens up, still moving cautiously, he eyes you. He hesitates for a moment, his joking confidence wavering momentarily, then finally holds out his hand.

“Give me your phone.”

You oblige, sceptically. “What are you doing?”

“Giving you my number,” he answers, as he pulls up your messages and types up a text. “You know, because we’re so close.”

Your laugh is surprised, and definitely pleased. “Wow. Even when you’re concussed, you’re still pretty smooth.”

He hands it back without a word, smug smile crinkling his eyes. You glance down at your phone, still displaying the text he sent himself:

_Bird Boy_   
_XXX-XXX-XXXX_

_Wow what a great looking phone number_

Later that night, as you settle in for bed, your phone pings with a text from Jason.

_I know, you should call it some time_

Funny enough, a few days later, he’s the one who calls you.

three.

Two years have passed since the apartment fire that brought you and Jason together again. That Summer, after he’d called you— “You were taking too long, Y/N,” he’d argued when you’d picked up—the two of you spent countless hours exploring little-known Gotham highlights. You brought him to a tiny, family-run bistro, nestled underneath a stack of apartments where energetic music always floats down from open windows. He’d shown you the view from the top of the Arkham Bridge at sunrise, and you’d gone back to it together every morning for the rest of the week.

And now, the two of you are close, in the way you’d teased at on the night he’d trusted you with his secret. You get coffee or lunch in between your college classes. You text jokes and updates intermittently. He even helped you move into your dorm last August, though the sight of him in a tight T-shirt, hauling boxes from his car to your room, sent you blushing faster than you’d like.

It’s not a far bet to call Jason Todd your best friend. And you’re determined to keep him.

You’re walking to the subway after a library study group when you spot him. He’s sitting on small cobblestone bridge, elbows on his knees, feet dangling over the edge. His head is up, eyes gazing out on the water in that alert yet disinterested way Jason has of doing so many things. Even though he doesn’t acknowledge you when you walk over and stand next to him, you know there’s no way he hasn’t noticed you come up. Batman’s trained him far too well for that.

In way of greeting, he sighs and throws you a smile. Crooked and lopsided. Completely Jason.

“May I?” you ask, grinning back. He holds out a hand and helps you climb up. “Milady,” he says as you settle in. You scoff and bump your shoulder against his. From the seat you take, your thighs are touching. Jason makes no move to change it; once you’re settled in, he slouches back, leaning on his hands, eyes still on the horizon.

The physical contact is… new. It’s the stuttering, conscious consequence of an event a few weeks back, when he’d texted that he couldn’t make the movie you’d planned to see together. You’d climbed up to his room at Wayne Manor (albeit clumsily—you’re no Robin) and found him sitting on the edge of his bed, heavily beaten and bandaged.

“I—I didn’t want you to worry,” he’d said, head down, as he let you in. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of black joggers, and though his torso was carefully wrapped in crisscrossing gauze you could still see some bruises peppering his ribcage.

“Jason,” you whispered, at once both sad and fond. You brought a hand to his cheek. He raised his head, and the answering look in his eyes, bright in the moonlight ripping through his curtains, was torn with some sadness you couldn’t quite parse, some love you didn’t yet know how to feel.

Your arms came around him slowly, tentatively smoothing over his skin, and you held each other in silence. With a shuddering breath, Jason tucked his nose into your neck. His arms tightened slightly around your waist—nothing vice-like, just secure, warm. You could feel him relax as one of your hands smoothed up and down the top of his spine. You pressed a small kiss to his cheek.

“C’mon, Bird Boy,” you whispered, loosening your arms.

You rested a hand above his heart as you pulled back to look at him properly. You felt its desperate thud under your palm, deeply aware of the smoothness of his skin, the firm muscles under your fingers. And resolutely, you ignored them, the same way you ignored that, just for a second, his gaze slipped to your lips.

“Let’s get some sleep,” you breathed.

You haven’t talked about it since, but you sense that you’re on the edge of some brilliant new precipice: one you don’t know how to cross without the risk of losing him.

“What’s on your mind?” you finally ask. Jason loves his long silences almost as much as he loves a snappy comeback, but this one feels out of place. The breath he lets go of seems to drain so much out of him.

“I don’t know where I stand with him anymore, Y/N,” he says, eyes downcast. “Bruce, Batman, whatever.” His voice is low, trailing off despondently, but you know not to butt in. He chews on his thoughts, trying to find the right words. “I’m nothing like Dick. And I’m nothing like what Alfred and Bruce want me to be. Or thought I would be. And I…”

Jason heaves another sigh, moving to lean forward on his knees again. Tentatively, you put a hand on his back, moving up and down like you did the night he’d been injured. This time, the breath he takes is shaky. You feel it move through his torso unsteadily, and Jason shuts his eyes.

“I try, and I try, and I’m just…”

The memory of sleeping next to Jason is his tiny twin bed is suddenly almost physical; a heavy arm around your torso, a warm chest at your back, steady breathing by your ear. His low grumble that had reverberated through your whole body when you’d tried to shift out of his arms, and the strong, muscled arm that had tightened, possessive, around your waist.

“I’ve got class, Jace,” you mustered, squirming in his grasp. He’d nuzzled his nose into the hair at the nape of your neck, sending shivers down your spine that you hoped he wouldn’t notice.

And then he’d let you go. And you’d gotten up and gone to class.

And you hadn’t talked about it since.

“Y/N, I’m terrified I’m gonna screw this up. That I’m gonna _stay_ this screwup; that one day, someone’s gonna wake up and think,”—Jason shrugs, almost as if in defeat— “‘Man, Jason’s just not worth the trouble anymore.’”

Your hand moves to his shoulder and you turn in towards him, leaning against his side, tucking your nose into his shoulder. Jason’s head bumps gently against yours. Your free hand comes to quietly curl around his on his lap; you feel him swallow as he takes it in his, thumping it against his leg.

Gotham is rarely beautiful. Dark and drenched, infested—sure.

But here, with the sun floating downwards in the warm, Spring air, catching sunlight on his skin and lips as the breeze sweeps up his hair to curl around his ears, you hope that maybe Gotham could be kind to someone as beautiful as him. That maybe he could get it through his thick skull that you—some orphanage kid that had met him stealing tires and saving lives—you had found a whole world in his arms. Your thumb rubs back and forth on his hand, and you turn your face to gaze over the water with him as you speak.

“Family isn’t just blood, Jason; we know that better than a lot of people. But so does Dick, and so does Bruce,” you say. “Family is something you choose. And Bruce chose you.”

You add in a whisper, “And so do I.”

_Soon,_ you think, when you say your goodbyes and go your separate ways for the night, and Jason kisses your cheek softly before letting you go. _I’ll tell him soon. I will._

A few days later, you get a call from Wayne Manor.

Jason Todd is dead.

four.

The corner store is about ten minutes from closing: almost desolate, at quarter to 11 p.m. on a Tuesday, in precisely the way you want it to be. The bell above the door _dings_ as you step in and the cashier barely glances at you as you walk in and head for the back, absorbed in whatever sports game is playing on her phone. You barely spare a glance to the aisles, either. You know exactly what you’re here for.

Staring down the label of a beer bottle, you feel a memory rise in your throat: stealing a beer from Bruce and sneaking sips of it with Jason in the woods behind Wayne Manor, before either of you had turned eighteen. Feeling light and invincible with your Bird Boy by your side, sunrise and warmth and possibility at your fingertips. A lifetime ahead of you. A lifetime ago.

You shove the thought down, and trade the single bottle for a six-pack.

The doorbell _dings_ once more, but a whining, worried voice stops you on your way to the cash register.

“Hey, hey, take it easy.“

You step quickly back behind a shelf, ducking to catch a glimpse of the cashier and—

_Gun_ , suddenly all you see is _gun,_ as a man in a grey hoodie and blue baseball cap waves it around the cahier’s face.

“Open the damn register,” says the gunman, snarling. His voice is muffled by a black scarf, pulled up under his nose. “Pronto, asshole.”

He glances around the store; ramrod straight, you press back behind the shelf, counting breaths. Everything feels impossibly loud: blood, heart, breath, the sound of a crowd on the cashier’s discarded phone. You shut your eyes, and above it all your mind _screams_ at the crimefighting crusader who left you behind.

You hear the gunman turn back to the girl at the desk, whose hands have gone from the air to fumble with the register. He shakes his weapon in the air, vaguely—a lax threat, but in Gotham, a very real one.

Maybe if you threw something, distracted the robber with—what, a cereal box? So that you could—what, take him down yourself? With your barely concealed grief and your six-pack of beer?

Who did you take yourself for, some Boy Wonder, who—

_Red_ ,suddenly all you see is _red_ , and a man in a crimson helmet has pounced on the gunman, knocking him to the ground with a crash. A fist wheels back wildly and connects with the robber’s face. Spit and blood and teeth erupt from his mouth. Another hit. And another; flashes of color and _cracks_ and _whacks_ and blurs of motion from beyond your line of sight.

Then a still, eerie silence. Your heart is hammering, erratically, and you gulp down air as you peek around the corner once more.

You spot the cashier peeking out from behind the counter, terrified, but unharmed. The gunman—his face is turned away from you, but even you can see it’s been horribly bloodied—is lying on the ground, disheveled and unconscious. Above him stands the man in the helmet, gloved fists at his side. You’d think he’d be breathing hard, but instead he heaves a single, decisive breath—a huff, almost, dismissive and angry—in the other man’s direction.

Then he looks around the store. Through the thin slits of his mask, you meet the man’s eyes, and you’re struck with a sudden, retched feeling, deep in your stomach.

You know those eyes.

How could you ever forget them?

There’s barely enough time to blink before he’s gone. Your six-pack of beer gets thrown on the counter; in a flash, you’re running out of the store behind him.

Out the door, onto the dark street and into Gotham’s flickering streetlights. Your head whips right and left, trying to catch a catch a glimpse of crimson, a silhouette you can’t forget—but nothing. No red hoods in sight.

Worry, then anger, rocket up your body, balling your fists. And then you’re yelling: “Hey Bird Boy!”

A couple walking down the street glares at you in surprise; you wave them off.

“I know it’s you!” you call out again, willing your voice to the tops of buildings, to take flight into the night. The sound rings out into silence. The echo breaks your heart.

Eyes still fixed to the sky, dark, starry and despair-filled, you find yourself whispering: “Please say it’s you.”

Slowly, you loosen your fists, and stuff your hands back in your pockets. The night air mocks you with a sudden gust of late-autumn wind.

_Give up_ , it whispers, as it has done for two years now.

After that day, that call from Wayne Manor, your downward spiral had been easy. Something small and green and barely growing had snapped and cracked in half at Alfred’s words, and you’d let yourself get shoved back into an orphanage room of bitter resentment. It had seemed like the only right thing to do, in the face of such a graceless exit—to just let go of responsibility, and effort, and _trying_ , in exchange for grief.

And now, as you have for all this time, you do what the wind tells you to. You start to walk, aimlessly—home? No, what good would that do—with your head low in the Gotham night. You _give up_ , no matter how hard your heart beats in your chest at the thought of the Red Hood’s eyes, and the way they—the way they looked like—

Something grabs your arm and _yanks_ , clamps a hand on your mouth before the scream breaks your lips. You’re pushed up against a cold brick wall, and boring into you, like needles, sharp, painful and bright, are those eyes.

His eyes.

You’re both breathing heavily. He looms over you, and he’s so close, so physical and _here_ , that you’re sure he can feel how desperately your heart is trying to escape your breathless lungs. And when he removes the hand from over your mouth, the gust that escapes you must tell him how unreal this all feels, how once again everything else around you has, suddenly, violently, crumbled away because, _because_ —

“Hey Bird Boy,” you breathe, finally.

It sounds like a bowstring _twanging_ to your ears; it echoes, awkward, out-of-tune, and goes nowhere. When before the nickname would have creased his eyes in a smile, here, they barely register a change, other than the loosening of his grip on your arm.

He takes a step back. The space makes you cold.

“I thought you were dead.”

“I was.”

His voice sounds gravelly and unused. You stare at him, his face still covered in smooth red metal, and you let out a disbelieving laugh, wrapping your arms around yourself. “What the _fuck_ am I supposed to say to that?”

He doesn’t answer, just keeps peering at you like he’s trying to solve a question he can’t find: poking, prodding, uncertain. He swallows, and sighs, the heaviness in his chest coming off him in waves, pressing him down.

There’s a different energy about him. He feels… shakier. The boy you snuck beers and watched sunrises with was angry, yes—but anger was a barrier, not a baseline. Jason was biting and smooth, but underneath was wrapped so much tenderness and warmth.

The man before you now… His anger unsteadies him. The word _unhinged_ touches on the pond-surface of your mind, lingers there, and ripples away.

Jason loved to draw out a silence, to let things sit and boil, and you can tell now that he’s trying to do the same. But he’s so full of frantic tension that he can’t stand still; his toe is tapping, his fingers flexing unrhythmically.

Slowly, you take a step forward and lift your hands. He flinches and catches your wrists in his gloved hands.

“Can I?” you ask.

You hear him hiss in a breath of air. He holds your gaze, still, breaking your heart in disjunct of his familiar eyes and unfamiliar posture. His grip is just a bit too tight.

“Please, Jace.”

And then he nods. The grip on one of your wrists loosens. His jitters intensify, and as you reach out, his free hand grips his jeans to still his movement. Gingerly, awkwardly, you unclasp the helmet and raise it off his head.

The feeling of _It’s him_ hits you like a wall and audibly knocks the wind out of you, and it’s the same every time, you realize, when you and Jason find each other. You absorb the changes, catalog him like your favorite book: unruly hair, untamed starlit eyes, underlined in sleepless, dark skin. The stubborn set of his jaw, his nose, his lips.

There’s a streak of white in his hair. Without thinking, you run your fingers through it. To touch it—him—grounds you, and you can breathe again, focusing on the soft, short hair under your fingertips. You feel the hot rumble of Jason’s skin, the jagged energy that bursts and beats in his blood.

The hand whose wrist he grasps shifts, and he lets your free it, moving to cradle his. You hold his hand in between you, close to your chest so that your heartbeat and the pulse in his palms thump out neighbouring, steadying rhythms.

“Does Bruce know?” Your hand keeps winding through his locks. For a moment, he closes his eyes.

“About my hair?” he asks, joking. You feel like you could cry; Jason Todd, _alive_ , saying whatever corny thought comes to mind. No matter how different he feels, he’s still here. You squeeze the hand you still hold to your heart.

“Jason,” you say, kindly, moving your hand from his hair to his cheek. He shudders a sigh—why are all his sighs like that? So heavy and choked—and shakes his head as he covers your hand with his gloved one.

In a dark alley, lost in Gotham, your Bird Boy takes a breath. He opens his eyes again.

“I’m not sure. He might, I don’t know.” A pause. “Knowing him, he probably does. Not much happens in Gotham without the Dark Knight looming over your shoulder.”

“As he is wont to do.”

“As he is wont…” He cuts himself off with a chuckle, and you realize you’d almost forgotten the sound.

Still nestled under his gloved hand, your thumb runs a line on his cheek, soothing.

“I missed you,” he whispers.

“I mourned you,” you respond, soft.

_I loved you_ , some secret part of you adds. It doesn’t bother to fix the verb tense, but it knows. Knows what the beating in your chest means, knows what the feeling pouring from your gaze is. Jason meets it with equal intensity. He mourns those years too.

“I wish I’d been there,” he says instead.

“Will you?” you ask. “Be there?”

He presses his forehead to yours. The vibration of his skin has slowed, the jitters down to a soothing thrum. His fidgets, his unsteadiness, have turned into a sway.

He’s Jason, _alive_ and Jason, and as you hold each other in the dark, uncertain Gotham night, you feel something small, bright and green, start to grow in your chest again.

For the first time in a very, very long time, you feel your lips climb into a slow smile, as he says the words that bloom hope in your heart, that breathe life to the night, that sound like standing up and _trying_ again.

“I will.”

(five.)

Like everything else in the main hall of Wayne Manor, the champagne in your glass glitters golden and brilliant—like everything has, really, since you found Jason again. The sunrise glinting off the bridge, off a rooftop, off the canal. Off his smile. It’s grown warm again, emotion creeping into the edges of his eyes slowly and uncertainly, in the year since he’s come back. His eyes look less haunted—not free of whatever ghosts he’s seen, but quieted. Bright. Here.

The room is crowded with socialites, reporters, and anyone else who could fit into a tux for a few hours. Bruce has just stepped off the stage, thanking all the right organizers and wishing whatever organization the night benefits “only the best for the coming year.” Guests begin to mill and mingle, and you scan the audience for a shock of white hair and deep black curls.

But this time, it’s Jason who finds you.

“It’s a far cry from the orphanage, that’s for sure,” he says by your ear, and you turn to meet him with a jump. Hands in the pockets of his slacks, he gestures with a smirk to the room around you.

“Oh, you don’t _remember_ the champagne we had back then?” you tease. “Honestly, so much better than this pedestrian brand.”

Jason grins. “Mr. Wayne should watch himself then, if an in-between house for street kids is throwing better shindigs than he is.”

On stage, a five-piece band is picking up a rhythm, their tempo something smooth and silky. Jason glances at them over his shoulder, and then takes a hand out of his pant pockets to hold an arm out towards you. He’s still smiling, the crooked crease of his mouth tinted with happiness and familiarity. Your heart, your whole body, feels warm. Bright. Here.

“He certainly should,” you say, and you leave your glass on a nearby table and take his arm out to the dance floor.

You’re not surprised that, in the almost ten years you’ve known Jason, you haven’t danced together. What with the vigilantism, and the college classes, and the dying and the coming back from the dead, it hadn’t exactly come up.

What _does_ surprise you is that he’s good at it.

He pinches your arm with a smirk when you suggest as much, but pointedly returns you both to your positions: one hand on your waist, the other holding yours, his thumb brushing your knuckles every so often. Your other hand is perched respectably on his shoulder. “Can’t exactly be a billionaire philanthropist’s brilliant adoptee without learning how to do a half-way decent waltz, now can I, Y/N?”

“Go easy on me then, will you? Not all us orphans got so lucky, Mr. Todd.”

He smiles and leads you easily into a three-step beat, even if the song is a bit fast for your beginner’s feet. A light pressure lets you know when to step back, when to move forward, and when the song eventually melts into something slower, you’re surprised at how easy it is. You glance up from your feet to Jason’s face, find him smiling fondly down on you. Something nervous swims up your throat, but it fizzles in the way he looks at you.

And unexpectedly, a question forms on your lips.

“That night,” you start, though you stop yourself, unsure. There are so many nights that you’ve spent by Jason’s side, almost as many as the nights that you’ve wished you were next to him, that it seems unjust to not specify. The night you found out he was Robin, or the one you learned he was Red Hood. The night you shared a bed. But one stands out: a night you hadn’t known would change you so drastically until it was too late.

“That night when we met, when you were taking the tires off the car in the alley. You started to say something.”

_Listen, Y/N, I don’t think I ever—_

“That night, what were you gonna say?”

For a moment, you’re afraid that maybe this new Jason doesn’t remember, but his lips curve into that familiar smile, warm and sly. His thumb moves on your hip, up and down, once. You’re sure he feels you shiver in response, but his eyes never lose their warmth.

“Do you remember why you beat me up, back when we were at the orphanage?”

You do, but just like you did so many years ago, you answer: “You had it coming.”

He ducks his head and laughs. It brings his breath too close to your face, and when he straightens up his eyes catch yours from underneath his curls. Warm. Bright.

Here.

“There was this girl, Janet,” he starts, and he rubs his thumb along your hip again. You’re not sure he even realizes he’s done it, this time. You let him weave his story the way he wants. Jason likes his silences, and likes his words, and more importantly, like his stories. And you, you like…

“Maybe a year or two younger than us, but a real shithead nonetheless. And I stole her favorite stuffed toy, and she cried about it for weeks until you got me to give it up.”

“I repeat: you had it coming.”

Jason smiles down at you, earnest and fond. The feeling swims through your whole body.

“I think, before that, it was always ‘Every man for himself,’ with me. Took a while to unlearn, even after the whole Robin thing. But back when this tiny ten-year-old—” he jostles you meaningfully, and you laugh, knocking your head against his chest briefly. Your hand moves from the edge of his shoulder to the ridge of his back.

“This tiny kid came at me fists swinging, fighting for this absolute asshole of an orphan, for the first time, I thought, y’know. Maybe there are things worth fighting for other than survival. Maybe we can fight for each other, against everything else.”

You watch his throat bob as he swallows. The band could still be playing, for all you know, but all that matters in this moment is the low timber of Jason’s voice, and his hands at your sides, and the way he’s looking at you like he’s always, _always_ seen you. This beautiful bird boy that you’ve loved for longer than you can remember, and that maybe—

“So, uh, thank you. For that,” Jason coughs, breaking the moment so abruptly that you laugh again. Where once the tension in his spine was off-putting and all wrong, here it’s adorable. He’s cute when he’s nervous, and it makes you laugh even harder, squeezing his shoulders in good humour.

“You waited—almost a _decade—_ justto say ‘thank you’?”

“I was gonna!” he half-grumbles, half-laughs, _all glorious_ , shooing you away only to pull you back in. His hands land on the small of your back, holding you even closer than before so that you can feel the chuckle vibrate in his chest, his heart. “But then that cop showed up, and then… Never seemed like the right time.”

“Never the right time, my ass. You’re just a coward, Jason Todd,” you tease.

“Hopefully not when it counts,” he says. The hum of his voice has gone soft, private over the sounds of music still swirling the room, and it quiets you suddenly. When you look to meet him, to ask what he means by that, his eyes are suddenly all you can see. Filled with that same love that you once couldn’t quite parse, in a world of dark bedrooms and vigilant nights all those years ago, only now—

Now it’s all on the surface. Now, Jason makes himself readable, brings everything he feels to the tips of his fingers, playing on your hips. His frantic rhythm, his jagged edges, his biting anger, and his never-ending warmth, they steady themselves on your pulse. Jason, tire-stealing, helmet-wearing Jason, makes himself an open book.

When you look to meet him, the world—as it always does with Jason Todd—disappears. But this time it slips, rather than crumbles, away, and draws a warm curtain around the two of you. Kind, for once, to you and your Gotham-bright Bird Boy.

When you look to meet him, he’s all you can see, and feel, and finally _taste_ as he brings his lips to yours.

And that small, green thing inside you—it _blooms_.

He’s so slow, you realize. He’s drawing out the kiss, lingering on your lips. You’d mistake him for relaxed, languid, if you couldn’t feel the irregular and excited trilling of the still-beating heart in his chest. You press back into him as your hands slip gently past his shoulder blades, tucking your fingers in the nape of his neck and behind his ears, and in response his hands move from your back to wrap around you completely.

It feels like watching the sunrise for the first time. It feels like breathing in on the bluest, brightest day of Fall. It feels like morning, and growing, and coming back to life.

His nose slides to your temple and he breathes out on your hairline, and you realize he’d been holding his breath during the kiss. You turn your head quickly to press a kiss to his cheek and lean back to look at him. His eyes flutter open, and he breaks out into the most brilliant smile you have ever seen.

_Jason Todd could eclipse the sun_ , you think.

“Hey,” he whispers.

“Hey, Bird Boy.”

And impossibly, his grin widens. Bright. Here.

Yours.

**Author's Note:**

> join me on my fic tumblr [@countingsunlight](https://countingsunlight.tumblr.com/) or on my main [@smallestbrown!](https://smallestbrown.tumblr.com/) i'm into fire emblem and the 100 and dc and a bunch o stuff


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